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Researchers quantify bonds formed by combatants in Libya conflict

A new study from Oxford University attempts to measure the bonds forged during country’s civil war, helping to explain why fellow soldiers often feel as close as family.

According to a new Oxford University study, the adrenalin and fear of front-line fighting help to encode memories more vividly and forge a stronger bond between people (Chris Hondros / GETTY IMAGES file photo)

In war, shared experiences of terror and adrenalin can lead strangers to bond together like family and fight and die for each other.

Working on the ground during some of the worst fighting in the 2011 Libyan civil war, Oxford University researchers have produced one of the first attempts to quantify the bonds forged in conflict.

Their research affirms something soldiers and people who experience traumatic events together have long understood intuitively, said Brian McQuinn, one of the paper’s authors.

“It’s actually the experience of going through something as a group. The more terrifying the experience — and war is a gruesome, terrible thing — the more intense that bond is and the more that fusion takes place,” he said.

Brian McQuinn, a Canadian who worked for the United Nations Development Programme and recently completed doctoral studies at Oxford, spent seven months doing field research after travelling in June 2011 to Misurata, on the coast of Libya.

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There, McQuinn and Oxford University professor Harvey Whitehouse surveyed 179 civilians fighting against Moammar Gadhafi — some on the front lines, and others directly supporting those who were.

They asked the rebels to pick one of a series of diagrams to explain how connected they felt to their family, their battalion of fellow fighters and other fighters opposing Gadhafi.

Of the 179 people surveyed, 99 per cent said they were “fused” with their family, 97 per cent with their own battalion and 96 per cent with other fighters.

Just 1 per cent said they felt the same type of connection to ordinary Libyans who had not joined the fight.

Forty five per cent of front-line fighters said they felt more closely connected to their battalion than their own family, compared to 28 per cent of non-fighters who reported such strong feelings.

The adrenalin and fear of front-line fighting help to encode memories more vividly and forge a stronger bond between people, he said, which explains why people who experienced the heaviest fighting also reported the strongest connection to the people they fought alongside.

“The more adrenalin you hit someone with — which you do by scaring the hell out of them, basically — the more indelible are those images. And whoever you experience that with becomes part of your identity,” he said.

Initiation rituals in hunter-gatherer societies, or the brutal training programs used by elite military units, try to create that bond through a shared experience of suffering, he said.

Such strong ties can encourage individuals to make “extreme sacrifices” for the good of their comrades, the researchers write.

“What the military learned pretty early on . . . is that people die for the person beside them, not for their country or for any ideology,” McQuinn said.

The phenomenon is not unique to Libya, but the conflict offered an unusual chance to interview participants while they were still fighting.

When McQuinn arrived in Misurata, rebels held the port city but were surrounded by forces loyal to Gadhafi.

Artillery hit Misurata regularly, and Gadhafi forces pressed several ground attacks into the city during the early summer. But the city was “actually quite safe” and had clearly defined front lines delineating the more dangerous areas, McQuinn said.

The National Transitional Council — at the time the de facto government in much of rebel-held Libya — welcomed journalists, and many rebel fighters were interested to speak with the researchers. That relative ease of access and safety presented a “unique research opportunity,” McQuinn said.

He said the researchers now hope to look at what happens to those bonds after the war.

“To go from being a civilian like us to being a front-line fighter in a matter of days or weeks, going back to normal life can sometimes feel really boring,” he said. Many fighters also said they missed the intimate and intense camaraderie forged in combat.

Of the fighters with whom McQuinn is still in contact, some have returned to their lives as professionals, students or workers.

Others joined the new government or held onto their weapons as members of the new state security services or militia.

“How do you de-fuse these people? What happens afterwards?” McQuinn asked.

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